namkcuR said:
Wow...looking at the source code brings back memories. I got an two-year associate's degree in this stuff last June. I used to look at code like this for hours on end every day to get my stuff done. But that was a blessing in disguise because doing so much of it gave me headaches and annoyance and made me realize that web development for me is a hobby, not a career(I think - I'm torn - that's another thread), and stopped me from going further with it.
Anyway, your site:
It's good, I like it.
What coding program did you use? Dreamweaver?
The Flash animation is good - effective, but not forcing itself upon the user, not jumping out. If it did that, it would be amaturish, but it doesn't, so it's good.
Your color schemes are good - they compliment each other well and make it easy to read. Kudos.
Your rollovers are good - I've always been a big fan of rollovers. I have one suggestion: I see you have the cookie-cutter navigation(aka "You are: Home>CurrentPage") going to let the user know where they are. For the same purpose, you could also make the navigation bar button corresponding to the current page stay in a 'down' position. Like, say you click the 'staff' button on the nav bar. The rollover uses an 'up' graphic and a 'down' graphic to make that rollover work. What you can do is, make it so that when the 'staff' page loads, by default, the graphic for the 'staff' button on the nav bar is the 'down' graphic, so that it stands out from the rest of the buttons on the nav bar and is a clear indicator of where the user is. And you could do that with every page on the site. I hope that made sense. It's easier to show than to describe just about anything computer-related.
Did you have to make the site XHTML-Complient? I hope not, for your sake. XHTML, imho, is a pain in the ass, and a surefire way to give yourself a migrane. Making a page with flash embedded in it XHTML-Complient is near-impossible. You have to nest the embedded flash inside of a javascript statement. That is easier said than done, to say the least. Bottom line, XHTML is not worth the trouble, imho.
Finally, on your copyright stamp, you could add the actual copyright symbol...you gotta hold alt and press a number combo but I can't remember what the number combo is off the top of my head. That's just a small, trivial suggestion though 
Good job though. Certainly a big improvement over what was there. That old site looks like it was done by someone who learned HTML about twenty minutes before coding the thing.
1. Yes, got lazy and used Dreamweaver for the coding (for smaller/simple projects I use HTML and just do it from scratch, but Dreamweaver makes the CSS go faster).
2. I used Flash for the top logo. Never used Flash before, did not know how to use the motion path, so I made that frame-by-frame. It sucks, but I don't care because none of them could do any better.
3. The color scheme reflects their signature colors - blue and green make up the interior of the gym (green walls, most AAI gymnastics equipment is blue), and red and orange are the colors all the staff wear.
4. Yes, I like rollovers as well and they're pretty easy to create in FireWorks. I couldn't remember to get it to stay "down" while that page was loaded. I do know what you're talking about though. I'll probably look into it again once I find my FireWorks manual. In my classes, the profs always insist on breadcrumb trails at the top, so I included one incase I ever submit this in place of a course assignment.
5. I didn't do anything XHTML unless it coded something without me knowing. Just plain ol' HTML and CSS.
6. I couldn't remember the copywrite Alt combination either! I'll look it up in the future...
7. I showed the old site to some of my more proficient web design/web developer friends and they all insist it was created based on a simple Frontpage template that was popular, say 1995ish. I made sure to point this out in my presentation. The new site is 100% unique, I did everything from creating the star background to the Flash to the color scheme, taking the photos, creating the rollovers, etc.
Like you, web desing is a hobby for me. My friends say I'm good, but I know I'm not that good, I just enjoy doing rather simple sites for myself and small organizations. I have friends who can do java, perl, mysql, css, etc, etc inside and out and already sell their own software packages. If I made a career oif it, I'd have a LOT more to study and would probably end up hating it.
I will clean up some of the code in the next few weeks. I always run my sites through this free code validator thing.
What sucks is that I knew HTML very well a few years ago in high school--but I've retained very little of it and have been trying to reteach myself.
They should have let you ditch the stars though as they just don't look right.
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